Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions. Australian research into marketing

Transcription

1 Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions Australian research into marketing

2 Foreword In today s increasingly competitive economic environment, the need to demonstrate ROI from marketing spend has never been as crucial. It is not surprising that given its high return on investment, the use of marketing by Australian organisations is on the increase. According to industry analyst house Forrester Research, the volume of marketing messages is expected to reach 838 billion in 2013 in the US. Locally, the Australian Communications and Media Authority researched Australians and confirmed that is the most popular online activity by a significant margin 1. However with an ongoing increase in marketing volume, consumers are overwhelmed with information. As a result, there is an inevitable decline in the effectiveness of marketing. Open and click rates for marketing campaigns are declining worldwide as recipients struggle to consume the increasing volume of s they receive, many of which are irrelevant. Unique open rates are declining, from 21% at the start of 2006, down to 15% in the year end Forrester Research anticipates that by 2014, direct marketers will waste $144 million on s that never reach their primary target due to poor deliverability. What is becoming increasingly apparent is that organisations that do not adhere to marketing best practices are experiencing and will continue to experience a rapidly shrinking ROI from their campaigns. As the graph below indicates, five years ago the relative performance for best practice and non-best practice marketing messages was similar. Performance of marketing over time 100% Today, however, the graph indicates best practice marketing significantly outperforms poorly planned and executed campaigns by approximately 50%. This performance gap is likely to widen even further as overall marketing volumes increase and the competition for recipients attention intensifies. Marketers are finding that they have to provide increased value, think about relevance and pay more attention to their programs to see a continued increase in its impact. Non best practice approaches to marketing, such as load and blast, have been successful in the past, saving marketers time and money. Today however, engaging in such techniques not only causes audience fatigue and decreased ROI, it may cause significant damage to brand and customer relationships. Despite its perceived simplicity, best practice marketing is complex. It consists of many elements including the frequency of s, audience segmentation, tailored content, useable design, insightful reporting and measurement and deliverability - these all need to be carefully managed and work effectively in unison to achieve maximum results. This research paper has been undertaken to evaluate Australian organisations current marketing practices. This paper explores five key failings in marketing and how they are preventing Australian organisations from achieving best practice marketing. It also provides practical advice to marketers on how they can accomplish optimal results from marketing campaigns by sending the right messages, to the right individuals at the right time. 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% Best Practices Non-best Practices Graph: Marketing Sherpa 1 ACMA, Australia in the Digital Economy, online participation report, Roy Morgan graph, 2 CheetahMail Professional Services Department Study, Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

3 Executive Summary Experian commissioned research conducted by an independent research house into the views of more than 300 marketing professionals across multiple industries. It explores how Australian B2B and B2C organisations are using marketing. Overall the research found that marketers are increasingly turning to marketing to engage customers and drive business outcomes. 57% of organisations have increased the frequency of their marketing campaigns over the previous 12 months and 67% plan to continue to increase campaign frequency over the next year. However, the statistics in this research report show that the quality of marketing and resultant long term customer relationships are being neglected. Frequently, marketers are sending out marketing campaigns that prioritise speed and convenience at the expense of relevance and targeted content. Product news and service information remains the biggest focus of marketing content (56%). Even though 60% of organisations rate segmentation and targeting as having a high to very high impact on the success of marketing, more than a quarter of organisations do not use segmentation at all (26%). There is a misconception that marketing is low-cost and therefore marketers can afford to send poorly conceived and crudely executed campaigns because any return is a good result, however small. While the financial outlay required to send thousands of s is relatively inexpensive by comparison, the neglected investment is in human capital and the time commitment required from the marketing team to achieve a positive ROI. The research indicates that marketers must invest more time and expertise to achieve higher quality campaigns that generate loyal customers and long term business results. Particularly as the pressure is on from the top almost three-quarters of marketers believe their executive teams value or highly value marketing (74%). Remarkably, however, 17% of organisations have no means in place to measure the success of their marketing campaigns. This means that more than 1 in 6 marketers in Australia have no idea whether their campaigns are achieving positive business outcomes or indeed whether they are damaging their brand by sending out irrelevant content. Already, almost two thirds of respondents admitted that they delete between 25 to 75% of all marketing s they receive from other organisations without reading them. 24% delete more than half. The findings all indicate that if marketers fail to combat the rising fatigue, they risk permanently damaging the medium as an effective communication tool. In response to the increasing challenges that marketers face, this research reveals the missed opportunities to enhance marketing. It is divided into five categories for improvement. These are: 1 Volume: Excess use destroying ROI 2 Audience Segmentation: A key point of differentiation for savvy marketers 3 Content and Design: The perception gap between supposed quality and reality 4 Reporting and Measurement: The under-utilised tools to enhance ROI 5 Distribution and Deliverability: Neglect results in wasted investment and poor returns Even though 60% of organisations rate segmentation and targeting as having a high to very high impact on the success of marketing, more than a quarter of organisations do not use segmentation at all (26%). 3 - Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

4 Research Results: Volume As many marketers feel the squeeze on their budgets, marketing is becoming more popular as a cost effective and measurable way of communicating with customers and prospects. It is reported that more than one-quarter of the s that consumers receive in their inboxes is marketing 3. This demonstrates the careful balance that marketers must achieve to connect with customers and prospects without bombarding them with too much content. The inbox is becoming a crowded and cluttered place. The challenge for marketers is that too little communication does not maximise the growing lead generation and sales opportunity around marketing whereas too much will inevitably cause recipient fatigue and erode the value of the medium. Frequency of Marketing 21.20% 5.20% 20.80% 31.30% 21.50% Overall, there is a significant proportion of marketers that are seeking to maximise the reported ROI of the medium with 31% engaging in marketing more than once a week on average, according to the Experian survey. 60% of B2B marketers regularly send marketing communications two or more times in a month, compared to 47% of B2C marketers. At the other end of the scale, more than a quarter (26%) of B2C marketers still send ad-hoc s rather than regular communications. This compares to less than a fifth of B2B marketers, demonstrating that marketing is relied upon more heavily in the B2B sector. According to B2B Marketing Magazine, marketing accounts for over 50% of all B2B marketing communications 4, a sizeable amount when you consider all the available tools. However, B2B subscribers are twice as likely to consider spam if it comes too frequently 5. 5 or more per month Once a quarter 2 to 4 per month Ad hoc Once a month The research found the use of marketing by Australian organisations is set to become even more pervasive over coming years. 57% of organisations have increased the frequency of their marketing campaigns over the past 12 months. 40% of those attribute the increase to the fact that marketing is now being used to support more marketing tactics. 67% will further increase their campaign frequency over the next 12 months. In addition to the broader application of marketing to support more marketing activities, the main factors driving the increasing frequency of marketing are its low cost (30%) and its high ROI (22%). 3 JupiterResearch (2007) 4 B2B Marketing magazine, data survey, May MarketingSherpa (2007) 4 - Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

5 Research Results: Volume Which business outcomes do you use marketing for? Unsurprisingly, the most popular business outcome marketing is used for is sales generation. With almost two thirds of those surveyed rating customer retention as one of the top three business outcomes of marketing (64%), it is critical marketers do not saturate their customers with irrelevant content. Marketing used for Business Outcomes Facilitate face-to-face interaction Process automation Marketing Customer retention Sales generation Experian CheetahMail Tips: How to determine an marketing frequency for your audiences When determining frequency, you should not only consider how often you want or need to send your messages. You must also consider how often your recipients want to hear from you. Both are valid needs; how you balance them will determine whether your program succeeds or fails. Ask yourself this question: Do you send each message because you have something new, urgent, timely or relevant to tell your recipients, or because you have to meet a publishing schedule? Educate senior management about over ing and the long-term impact of falling open and click through rates. There is a danger for them to look at short-term results - looking at each campaign in isolation rather than taking the long term view. Over time, sending too many s will result in individuals becoming less responsive to all future s. There is no correct formula for marketing frequency. It should, however, be largely determined by the customer and the availability of new and relevant content. Don t saturate your recipients with repeated offers if they didn t like it the first time, you will be an irritation in their inbox if you send it again. 5 - Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

6 Research Results: Segmentation As users struggle to digest the huge volumes of they receive daily, it is increasingly important to ensure that marketing messages are highly tailored communications according to recipients interests and requirements. According to Forrester Research, targeted s utilising dynamic content and segmentation increase revenue by over 400%. Awareness of the importance of segmentation is growing amongst Australian companies, with 60% of those surveyed rating segmentation/targeting as having a high to very high impact on the success of their marketing campaigns. Yet 26% of organisations do not use segmentation at all. This is an improvement on 2008 however, when one third of Australian marketers surveyed (35%) said they did not use segmentation. Do you use segmentation in your marketing? Of those who do not use segmentation at all, more than a quarter send a high volume of five or more campaigns per month (26%), indicating a load and blast approach that doesn t tailor content to the recipient s needs. The majority of organisations understand that you cannot engage in an effective, targeted campaign without clean, accurate data. According to 62% of companies, database quality has a high to very high impact on the success of marketing campaigns. The research results show a significant gap between the information organisations are storing about their customers and the information they are using to segment their audiences effectively % 35% Beyond addresses, the top customer information stored by organisations in their marketing databases includes postal addresses (78%), past purchase history/interaction with company (54%), job title (48%) and demographics e.g. age and gender (46%). Yet only 17% store information about the customer s behaviour in relation to past marketing campaigns (e.g. Web browsing, opening/clicking); and only 14% use it to further segment their campaigns % 26% Yes No 6 - Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

7 Research Results: Segmentation In addition to addresses, what customer information is stored in your database? Number of respondents Name Job title Employer Information stored Postal address / state Demographics e.g. age, gender, wealth Past purchase history / interaction with company Interest areas / customer specified criteria Behaviour e.g. web browsing, opening / clicking None The results suggest the vast majority of organisations are not using valuable reporting data gathered from past marketing campaigns to further segment their audiences and deliver more targeted communications. The data fields used most commonly to segment marketing are past purchase history/ interaction with company (35%), interest areas/ customer specified criteria (34%), and postal address and demographics such as age and gender (32%). While the majority of organisations recognise the importance of segmentation in marketing, many organisations are less confident about their teams database management and segmentation capabilities. What data fields do you use to target s (segmentation)? The survey found that 73% of companies rate their in-house teams ability in marketing content development as skilled to very skilled and 68% rated their team s ability in marketing design as skilled to very skilled. Number of respondents Yet only 58% of organisations rated their teams ability in database management and segmentation as skilled to very skilled. One in 10, rated their teams as under skilled or highly under skilled in this competency. Do not target marketing using segmentation Job role / Employer Postal address / location Fields Used to Target s Demographics e.g. age, gender, wealth Past purchase history / interaction with company Interest areas / customer specified criteria Type of contact e.g. partner, customer etc. Behaviour e.g. web browsing, opening / clicking Data Fields Used in Segmentation 7 - Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

8 Research Results: Segmentation Experian CheetahMail Tips: marketing audience segmentation The objective of segmenting your list is to increase the relevancy of your messages so that they add value to your audience and are continued to be opened and read (facilitating a long term relationship with the recipient). There are many ways to segment marketing subscriber data. Below are three segmentation categories which should be considered when deploying targeted marketing campaigns. 1 Behaviour segmentation relies exclusively on subscriber actions or activity. Audiences can be segmented into the following groups: New subscribers - these are new to your list. They should all receive a welcome . In MarketingSherpa s Benchmark Guide, 30% of respondents stated that sending a welcome message was very effective. Inactives - those who have not opened or clicked Actives those who have opened and clicked Buyers those who have converted. Treat good customers as VIPs Browsers - people who have opened , but not clicked or converted 4 Top Tip: You may find that 10% of the subscriber base contributes 40% of revenue.try giving inactives and browsers a bigger incentive to convert them to a buyer whilst at the same time making existing buyers loyal through privileges. 2 Demographic segmentation is based on criteria such as gender, age, interest based preferences, occupation, location, number of children or other socio-economic factors. It can decrease the number of subscribers obtained if you try to gather all the demographic information you desire in the registration page. The more mandatory information requested, the higher the chance of a potential subscriber abandoning the registration process or providing false information. 4 Top Tip: An effective way of collecting demographic information is to ask for minimal data on initial registration. After you have an existing, trusted relationship, build your recipient data. Be honest, explain that you are collecting this information to send more relevant information to them in the future. You could even send a survey with an incentive that requires a few personal details to be completed. This way you will increase your initial subscribers and maximise opportunities to build relationships and customers. 3 Other segmentation: There are a variety of other ways to segment recipients. One of the largest is by acquisition channels. Different acquisition channels have different characteristics. Co-registration list members, for example, will usually respond or convert differently than organically acquired subscribers or an in store acquisition. 4 Top Tip: For B2B marketers, segmentation options typically revolve around creating content geared toward a specific job description, product line, or industry vertical. According to research conducted by MarketingSherpa in 2009 on the impact of segmenting by vertical vs. product line vs. job description: Segmenting by title is somewhat helpful Segmenting by product line is slightly more effective than segmenting by title Segmenting by industry vertical is the most productive 8 - Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

9 Research Results: Content and Design The research found that most organisations believe design / layout and content have the biggest impact on the success of their marketing campaigns. The vast majority of organisations (70%) manage the content of their marketing campaigns in house. This plays to the marketers perceived strength with 73% rating their in house marketing team s ability in this competency as skilled to highly skilled. For 56% of organisations the design and layout of their marketing campaigns is managed in-house - an interesting finding given it is a highly specialised discipline. Furthermore, 68% rated their in-house team s ability in marketing design as skilled to highly skilled. The biggest content focus of marketing for organisations is product and service information (56%), followed by customer service messages (14%), then company news (11%). Interestingly, only 8% of organisations focus their marketing content on industry news and thought leadership. What is the biggest content focus in your marketing? 2.90% 7.50% 14.00% % The findings are noteworthy considering other industry research suggests that 40% of small business executives want to see how-to type of content in their ( ) newsletters and 26% want to see topics about strategy and leadership 6. While most marketers feel very confident in the quality of the content, design and layout of their own marketing communications, the majority rate the quality of the content (42%) and design (44%) of the marketing they receive as just average. The finding suggests there is a perception gap. Marketers regard the quality of their own campaigns to be high compared to what audiences actually like. The survey found that 23% of organisations rate the relevance of marketing campaigns from other organisations as poor to very poor. Only one in 10 rate the relevance of the marketing s they receive as very good. According to industry analyst Jupiter Research, more than half of recipients stop subscribing to opt-in s because the content is no longer relevant 7. The research results reflect this, with most marketers (63%) admitting they delete between 25 to 75% of all marketing s they receive from other organisations without reading them. 24% delete more than half of all marketing s they receive without reading them. 8.10% 11.40% Product / service information Company news Industry news / thought leadership Customer service messages Education Events 6 Bredin Business Information (2007) 7 JupiterResearch (2007) 9 - Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

10 Research Results: Content and Design Percentage of Marketing Deleted Without Reading 7.80% 24.40% 28.70% It is an alarming finding for marketers who are operating on tight budgets and need to demonstrate high ROI. The crux of the problem lies in the relevance of the content to the recipients and how often you can send new relevant content without saturating them % 0-25% 51-75% 26-50% % Experian CheetahMail Tips: Relevant content and design Irrelevance is the new spam. Once your audience stops reading your , it is very difficult to win them back and re-engage them. To avoid this scenario, consider split testing different designs to see which garners the best results. marketing is like a publication, so you need to think like an editor when determining content. Run editorial planning meetings for your content to establish current topics of interest to your audience and what your company wants to say about them. Too much content is focused on product sales and corporate messaging. Focus content on news, trends, events and research that are relevant to the readers specific interests. Use segmentation to increase content relevance. marketing copy should act as a teaser, enticing recipients to click through to the website to view the entire article. Ensure the copy is written as such short, rich and very enticing to click for further information. Less is more a small quantity of good content is recommended rather than large quantities of poor content Use reporting tools and data to determine what your different audiences read and what they don t. You could also convene a focus group of subscribers or conduct an survey to take stock of your marketing content and find areas for improvement for future campaigns Subject line and from field are still important. Ensure your subject lines: Show value in the first two words Avoid using words known to decrease open rates and deliverability, e.g. Free Gift, Apply Now, Win etc. Are not a hard sell Are not too long 40 characters is a good maximum Leverage a hot brand where appropriate e.g. Facebook and Twitter are widely popular at the current time Be sure your messages are readable on different platforms such as Hotmail versus Gmail and also on other formats. What looks good on a high-powered desktop may not even be visible on a mobile phone. If you send a high volume of s, it s a good idea to do a test to 10% of your database using two different subject lines. Find out which one generates the highest open rates and go with that one for the rest of the campaign Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

11 Research Results: Reporting and Measurement One of the many benefits of marketing is the ability to use reporting data to precisely track and measure results. Today there are advanced marketing solutions that provide marketers with deep, robust reporting capabilities and give numerical and graphical breakdowns of campaign performance. However, despite its obvious importance in marketing, the research has identified a significant disparity in marketers adoption of reporting and measurement tools. Many marketers use campaign information to improve the response and therefore revenue of marketing. Conversely, on the reverse end of the scale, there are still a great deal of organisations that miss valuable opportunities to learn from previous campaign successes or failures. This is possibly partly due to a lack of acknowledgement for the role that reporting can play in improving marketing. The research found that most organisations (53%) rate the quality of distribution and reporting tools as having only an average to very low impact on the success of marketing campaigns. This performance gap is defining which campaigns live up to the widely lauded ROI of marketing and which are still falling short. Reporting data usage Almost one in five of organisations do not receive or use reporting data at all (19%). This is an alarming situation although it is an improvement from 2008, where 30% of organisations surveyed didn t have access to reporting tools. Measuring success... or failure The survey found that the majority of organisations (57%) measure the success of their marketing campaign by the number and value of sales it generates, followed by open and click-through rates (34%) and number of hits to website (33%). Remarkably one in six marketers do not measure the performance of their marketing campaigns at all. This is despite the fact that 95% believe their marketing campaigns generate average to good ROI. How do you measure the success of your marketing campaigns? Other Number of addresses in database Number of website hits as a result Open and click-through rates Number / value of sales generated No measurement A lack of reporting tools means that marketers have no idea whether campaigns achieve positive business outcomes. More importantly, as consumers continue to be deluged with opt-in s and spam, there is an increasing danger of long term brand damage by sending out irrelevant content. For those organisations that do use reporting data, the three reporting categories they value most are deliverability (46%), conversion/sales (43%) and open rates (42%) Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

12 Research Results: Reporting and Measurement For those organisations that manage their campaigns in-house, 61% believe their teams are skilled to highly skilled in distribution and reporting. B2C Ranking of Marketing Tactics in Terms of ROI (1st is best ROI, 6th is worst) Indeed, the perception about the value of quality reporting and its impact on the success of marketing could be starting to change. When it comes to marketing processes, the element that is currently being reviewed by most organisations (59%) is distribution and reporting. For those that are measuring the success of their marketing campaigns, the results are good. For both B2B and B2C marketers, marketing ranked the number one tactic for ROI at 35% and 26%of respondents respectively. Search / Online Marketing Events Advertising Direct Marketing PR / Media Coverage 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% The majority of B2B and B2C marketers also agreed that advertising delivers the second highest ROI (21% of B2B and 24% of B2C). For the third best performing tactic, B2B marketers favoured PR and media coverage at 13% whereas 15% of B2C marketers rated search/online marketing and direct marketing jointly. Looking at marketing specifically, the survey found that 58% of organisations believe their marketing campaigns deliver a good to very good ROI and 60% believe their marketing ROI is increasing. Meanwhile 9% of organisations cannot quantify ROI at all. 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th B2B Ranking of Marketing Tactics in Terms of ROI (1st is best ROI, 6th is worst) Search / Online Marketing Events Advertising Direct Marketing PR / Media Coverage 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 12 - Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

13 Research Results: Reporting and Measurement Experian CheetahMail Tips: Effective marketing reporting and measurement As marketers become increasingly pushed to tailor their campaigns to generate ROI, reporting data will become more relevant and valued. You can only achieve solid improvements on campaign performance when you take time to measure where your campaigns are excelling or failing. If you re not measuring campaign performance, you re missing out on key insights that can create happier customers and ultimately better sales and ROI. Set budgets and objectives around metrics. As the saying goes, you can only manage what you can measure so establish targets to evaluate performance. Evaluate the what to achieve the why: The what is the data but don t stop at the numbers - use them to understand the cause for the performance, either good or bad. By understanding the cause you can influence the success of future campaigns. From high level trends to granular detail on individual recipients, reporting should be across three levels: 1 Campaign and cross campaigns: Measure broad open and click through rates, deliverability and unsubscribes for each campaign. Importantly, compare these over time. Graph the open rates, click rates and other key metrics long term. Only then can you track relative performance to understand which campaigns and elements are successful and why. 2 Content: Measure how articles performed and categorise them accordingly (for example by gold, silver and bronze depending on their conversion rates). This will enable you to see patterns from the stories and offers in your campaigns that your audience wants to read. Use these learnings in other areas across the business such as for the sales team, advertising agency and business planning. For example, if you achieve the most click throughs on an article about a specific area of your business, consider whether you need to invest more in advertising for this sector. 3 Individuals: Measure which recipients open what articles and use the data to build knowledge on areas of interest. This data can be used for future segmentation e.g. send an to all the people who click on a specific offer or story Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

14 Research Results: Distribution and Deliverability The science of getting your messages into the inboxes of your recipients. Global statistics indicate that many marketers disregard the importance of deliverability. Successful deliverability depends on effective content strategies to avoid being treated as spam and selecting a high quality software provider that has good relationships with Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Approximately one-third of marketers report delivery rates of 80% or less 8 meaning 20% of s sent in campaigns fail to reach their target recipient. 30% of practicing marketers don t take the time to calculate their actual rate of delivery according to MarketingSherpa 9. The Experian research findings reflect the low priority many organisations give to deliverability, with the subject line and use of the right distribution tools rated as the two lowest factors impacting on the success of marketing campaigns. However the fact that distributing and reporting are the main marketing components currently being reviewed by organisations demonstrates that marketers are becoming increasingly aware of the significant role they play in effective marketing. Components of marketing under review Distribution/ reporting Design Content database management Overall project management Outsource partner % of respondents This high number of companies reviewing these fundamental elements may be linked to the high number of organisations (55%) that are using in-house tools rather than third party software solutions that benefit from ongoing product development and frequent upgrades. The Experian research findings reflect the low priority many organisations give to deliverability, with the subject line and use of the right distribution tools rated as the two lowest factors impacting on the success of marketing campaigns. 8 JupiterResearch (2006) 9 MarketingSherpa, Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008 (2008) 14 - Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

15 Research Results: Distribution and Deliverability Experian CheetahMail Tips: Improving deliverability Select a reputable distribution software: Different marketing software tools do not achieve the same deliverability. Some allow any illegal spam or content to be distributed from their tools and are subsequently banned by ISPs. All content sent from the banned software will not be distributed by the ISP and therefore can significantly affect the deliverability of your campaign. Reputable marketing software providers have a stringent approval process of customer and campaigns, including manual checks of the content to ensure legitimate content. Whilst this stringent approach can slightly delay the speed of distributing a campaign (typically by a few hours) you can be confident of vastly improved deliverability. Obtain accurate addresses at point of capture: Many bounces are due to incorrect addresses, either through fake subscribers or data entry errors. Leverage simple and effective automated tools on your website to verify addresses including: Address Validation: Use address validation software on your website subscription form and call centres to ensure real addresses are captured. This validation can be done in real time with no impact to website users. Double opt in for subscription: The double opt in subscription process means an is sent to subscribers after registration to verify the address and the validity of the subscriber. Process bounces: The cause of delivery failure is varied and may include old addresses (the result of job changes for example), large file sizes or failure to receive HTML or graphic s. Sound processes around bounce management will improve your database quality and deliverability. These processes include validation at point of subscription. Alternatively conducting routine database cleansing. Manage sender reputation: ISPs use a range of variables to allocate IPs with a sender score, which is then used to judge the legitimacy of s. Reputation management systems are available for marketers to help identify their sender score and manage their relationships with ISPs. Have a dedicated domain from which you send your campaigns: People decide if something is spam just by looking at the address the message is sent from. Use your company brand in your From Address to make it recognisable and don t send from noreply@companyx.com or donotreply@companyz.com. Manage images and content: Avoid too many images in s as this increases the chance of getting caught in spam filters. Use call-to-action-links to drive subscribers to additional content. Remember the itself is just the teaser to drive web traffic and, ultimately, sales. Also ensure a balance in image to text ratio. This will help with deliverability and enable recipients who don t have access to images the chance to understand content. Make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe: Marketers need to ensure they manage their distribution lists, making it easy for people to unsubscribe and be removed from the list Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

16 Conclusion The five failings of marketing what will you change? The research demonstrates that there are many missed opportunities for marketers to enhance the quality and therefore results of marketing. marketing will progressively fail if marketers continue to have a poor appreciation of the critical need to make communications relevant and timely. From design through to deliverability, marketers must adopt a best practice approach if they are to maintain the benefits of marketing in the long term. For more information about your marketing requirements, please contact: info@au.experian.com or The tips in this paper are designed to be a starting point to migrate marketing communications to the next level Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

17 About Experian Experian CheetahMail Experian CheetahMail is the trusted service provider of marketing solutions for top enterprises including HMV, Estée Lauder and KLM. With the industry s largest client services teams, feature-rich technology and a broad range of data management options, we enable clients to build data-driven, relevant relationships with their customers and maximise ROI. For more information, please visit or info@au.experian.com Experian Hitwise Experian Hitwise is the leading global online competitive intelligence service, helping clients protect and grow their market share through the application of internet measurement data. Experian Hitwise measures the largest sample of internet users - 25 million worldwide, including 3 million in Australia. This sample size allows clients to understand internet behaviour and competitive activity through data that is unmatched in timeliness, depth and breadth. For more information, please visit or info@au.experian.com Experian QAS Experian QAS provides contact data management (CDM) software and services that help organisations drive value from their data. Every organisation stores contact information on its customers, prospects, suppliers and employees. Over 10,000 organisations worldwide choose Experian QAS products and services to manage the quality and accuracy of this data to improve business processing, financial performance, efficiency and the customer experience. For more information please visit or info@au.experian.com 17 - Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing

18 Research Methodology Experian CheetahMail commissioned PureProfile to conduct the Experian CheetahMail Annual Marketing Survey 2009 in September, The survey generated more than 300 responses from B2B and B2C organisations across Australia from a wide range of industries, including retail, financial services, government, technology, online/digital, travel/leisure and other. The respondents roles ranged from Marketing Directors, Managers, and Executives through to Digital/Online Marketers and Marketing Administrators. Unless otherwise stated, all results and commentary are based on the responses of the survey participants. Industry Sectors 13.2% 6.6% 4.0% 17.2% 31.8% 13.9% 13.2% Retail Financial Services Government Technology Online / Digital Travel / Leisure Other B2B / B2C 51.7% 21.9% 26.5% B2B B2C Both B2B and B2C Job Roles 2.6% 1.3% 34.4% 27.8% 33.8% Marketing Director Marketing Manager Marketing Executive Digital / Online Marketer Marketing Administrator 18 - Five new failings of marketing with best practice solutions: Australian Research into Marketing